The below is attributable to Acting Spokesperson Shejal Pulivarti:‎ Today, Acting Administrator Jason Gray met with the Prime Minister of the Republic of Yemen Dr. Ahmad Bin Mubarak. The two discussed the ongoing situation in Yemen, Houthi provocations in the Red Sea, and continued detention of humanitarian, international non-governmental organization, and diplomatic staff. The Acting Administrator commended PM Bin Mubarak’s ongoing efforts to shore up the banking sector in Yemen. The Acting Administrator reinforced the value of the Republic of Yemen government’s relationship with the United States, and that a stable government is essential for the security and prosperity of Yemen.

Serving as USAID Administrator has been the privilege of a lifetime. As the Biden-Harris Administration comes to a close, I am pleased to share an Exit Memo capturing some of USAID's key accomplishments over the past four years. This Memo chronicles how, in an era of strategic competition and transnational challenges, we’ve worked together to transform USAID into a more responsive, efficient, and catalytic Agency. It describes how we’ve evolved to partner far more closely and often with the private sector, navigate rapidly changing digital technologies, counter the threats posed by the People’s Republic of China’s approach to development, and more – all while responding to a series of crises, from historic natural disasters to devastating conflicts. Despite continuing challenges around the world, I am leaving this role enormously hopeful about the future of USAID and the work – and the stories in these pages will show you why. Samantha Power

This coming Martin Luther King, Jr. Day will coincide with our country’s most important ritual: the peaceful transition of power from one president to the next. At noon, a new Administration will be tasked with tackling significant challenges, many of which threaten the ideals of justice, freedom, and human dignity that Dr. King fought for. When he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, Dr. King proclaimed: “I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history.” Today, we remember those words and draw strength from them as we find our own abiding and audacious faith in the future. Our faith must be abiding because the kind of work we do at USAID inevitably takes time and comes with setbacks. When you’re taking on hunger, disease, poverty, oppression, and conflict, progress doesn’t come easily or all at once. It requires deep-seated belief in the impact and importance of the small differences we make every day. The trajectory of development progress in the past half-century has proven that over time, these small steps can lead to massive improvements in people’s lives. We must also be audacious, because quickly evolving challenges require quickly evolving solutions. And over the past few years, I have been amazed by the people across our teams who, on issue after issue, manage to pioneer new ideas to meet the moment, transforming the way we work at USAID to make us more responsive, more efficient, and more catalytic in everything we do, and securing lasting results for communities around the world. I hope you will continue to find the audacity to cast aside “the way it has always been done” and strive for even more substantial and enduring progress across our work. This coming Monday, let all of us remember Dr. King’s example and renew our faith in the possibility of a more just, peaceful, and prosperous world.

Twenty-one months of brutal conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. Half of Sudan’s population – approximately 25 million people – are enduring acute food insecurity, and at least 638,000 people are living in Famine conditions. Last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken determined that the RSF is responsible for Genocide. Today, Secretary Blinken announced sanctions against Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, the leader of the SAF and head of Sudan’s Sovereignty Council, for his responsibility for crimes committed against the people of Sudan, including lethal attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure like schools and hospitals. Secretary Blinken also announced sanctions against one company and one individual involved in weapons procurement for the SAF. The United States continues to demand that the SAF and RSF pursue a negotiated end to the fighting that puts Sudan back on the path to civilian-led government, and bring to a close this latest painful chapter in Sudan’s history. We call on all parties to the conflict to enable full and meaningful humanitarian access so that international and local aid workers can deliver lifesaving assistance to desperate civilians and prevent the further spread of Famine.

Today, USAID released its Economic Growth and Trade Policy, which affirms and renews the Agency’s commitment to fostering economic resilience and inclusive growth, while addressing critical global challenges to support our shared economic future. This new Policy will help strengthen economic resilience abroad while creating opportunities for American businesses and bolstering U.S. economic security. Economic growth and trade are critical to addressing the world’s pressing development and economic security challenges. However, unsustainable debt, slowing investment, supply chain disruptions, unfair trade practices, and economic coercion threaten development progress and global stability. The Economic Growth and Trade Policy offers a strategic roadmap to confront these challenges, positioning USAID to act quickly and effectively in the face of emerging economic issues. The Policy focuses on three overarching goals: Sustainable economic development: Ensuring growth strengthens a country’s ability to meet its development goals, without taking on excessive debt or depleting natural resources; Resilience to economic crises: Strengthening economies to withstand and quickly recover from negative shocks; and Improved inclusive economic opportunities: Driving equitable distribution of economic benefits. Underpinning these goals are five programming principles: expanding strategic partnerships, prioritizing systemic change, measuring and evaluating impact, using a cross-sectoral approach, and advancing U.S. strategic and economic priorities. To learn more about USAID’s Economic Growth and Trade Policy, please visit: https://www.usaid.gov/policy/economic-growth.

USAID welcomes the announcement of a ceasefire in Gaza. This ceasefire, which was a direct result of extensive U.S. diplomacy with our partners in the region, will begin the process of reuniting hostages with families that have been torn apart, and will begin to provide relief to the Palestinian civilians who have suffered immensely over the course of this brutal conflict. As the ceasefire is implemented, USAID will continue to prioritize efforts to get life-saving humanitarian assistance to those impacted by this devastating war. More than 2.1 million Palestinian civilians require urgent assistance – including nearly 1.9 million who have been displaced. An immediate and sustained surge in humanitarian assistance across Gaza will be essential to prevent further hunger, sickness, and death. The United States has provided nearly $1.2 billion in humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and neighboring countries since the start of the war. We are profoundly grateful to our humanitarian partners, who have taken on great personal risk throughout this conflict – the deadliest in history for aid workers – to alleviate suffering and save lives. Their work will continue – and we will seek to expand it significantly – thanks to the ceasefire deal. The U.S. government will work with the UN, the Government of Israel, and our partners in the region to improve conditions for the delivery of humanitarian assistance and to support regular, safe, and facilitated movement for humanitarian actors. Addressing the criminal looting of relief supplies and the breakdown of law and order that has worsened an already dangerous and uncertain operating environment will also remain critically important. This is a moment of enormous possibility, and as President Biden said, the United States is committed to making the most of it – by surging life-saving assistance to those in need throughout Gaza, and by working not just to end the war, but to build a just and enduring peace for the Palestinian and Israeli people. USAID Response in Israel and Gaza - October 2023

USAID reached new highs in our progress toward our commitment to put local actors in the lead, strengthen local systems, and be more responsive to local communities, according to a new report released today. The report, Growing Momentum: USAID Localization Progress Report, FY 2024, is the third annual update on USAID’s progress toward two Agency-wide localization targets set in November 2021 aimed at increasing the amount of direct funding to local organizations and increasing local leadership over program design, implementation, and measurement. The report shows that USAID provided $2.1 billion directly to local non-governmental, private sector and government partners, or 12.1 percent of USAID’s acquisitions and assistance (A&A) and government-to-government (G2G) funding. Of this, $1.9 billion went to local non-governmental or private sector partners through A&A partnerships – double the level of FY 2021 and 11 percent of all A&A funding) – and $169 million went to partner country governments through G2G partnerships. An additional $88 million went to regional partners. Both the number of new awards to local and regional partners and the number of unique local and regional partners also reached new highs in FY 2024, increasing by 87 percent and 48 percent, respectively, since FY 2021. In FY 2024, USAID captured for the first time the extent to which its programs took steps to elevate local leadership across the project lifecycle of design; implementation; and monitoring, evaluation, and learning. The new Locally Led Programs indicator tracks the use of a set of 10 “good practices” for local leadership, and USAID found that, in FY 2024, 35 percent of all qualifying USAID activities met the criteria for this indicator, utilizing at least one good practice in each of the three phases of the project lifecycle. But over three quarters of activities used at least one of the ten good practices for local leadership. As localization at USAID is fundamentally a reform effort, not just a set of targets, the report also details a range of actions the Agency has undertaken over the past year-plus to support current and future progress. These include steps to strengthen the policy foundation, incorporate locally led development and humanitarian assistance into strategic planning, lower barriers for local organizations to partner with USAID, support staff to elevate local leadership in programming, invest in staff and align staff incentives in support of localization goals, and champion locally led approaches in the broader development and humanitarian communities. In the spirit of transparency, USAID has also published the underlying data for the direct local, G2G, and regional funding analysis presented in the report.

Today, Secretary of State Antony Blinken made the determination that members of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied militias have committed genocide in Sudan. The RSF and allied militias have systematically murdered men and boys – even infants – on an ethnic basis, and committed rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence against women and girls of certain ethnic groups. The RSF and allied militias have also murdered innocent people attempting to flee the violence and prevented remaining civilians from accessing life-saving supplies. This determination comes 20 years after Secretary Colin Powell declared that the Janjaweed – the predecessor of the RSF – and the Government of Sudan were committing genocide in Sudan. It is unthinkable that the Sudanese people have been subjected to genocide twice in a generation by criminals seized with greed and the evil intent to control and harm others. In December 2023, Secretary Blinken determined that the RSF and Sudanese Armed Forces both committed war crimes, and the RSF and their allies committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. As a result of these atrocities and the ongoing conflict, half of Sudan’s population faces acute food insecurity and at least 638,000 people are living in Famine. The U.S. government used extensive documentary evidence in making this genocide determination, including eyewitness accounts, photographs, investigative work by relentless journalists, and videos by members of the RSF themselves. The fact that these criminals felt emboldened not only to commit these crimes, but also to document and even brag about them on video, is a horrific testament to the consequences of decades of impunity for atrocities and genocide. In connection with this determination, the U.S. government sanctioned RSF head Mohamed Hamdan Daglo Mousa, known as Hemedti, for his role in fueling the war in Sudan, and sanctioned seven RSF-owned companies based in the United Arab Emirates and one individual for their roles in procuring weapons and providing other material support for the RSF. I grieve for the victims of these atrocities, their families, and their communities. The ongoing civil war has emboldened the RSF, deprived communities of basic needs and services, and led to these horrible crimes. It must end. The victims of these crimes and the Sudanese people deserve accountability as part of broader efforts so that true healing and reconciliation can begin, and Sudan can make lasting progress toward the peaceful and democratic future the Sudanese people have sacrificed so much to pursue. Samantha Power

Independent experts from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification’s Famine Review Committee have confirmed the worst: Famine is ongoing in five areas of North Darfur, and West and South Kordofan, Sudan – including Zamzam and two additional camps for internally displaced persons – and is projected in five additional areas between December 2024 and May 2025. Half of Sudan’s population is now facing acute levels of food insecurity and at least 638,000 people are living under Famine conditions. This harrowing finding is made even more devastating by the fact that these conditions are man-made. The war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and bureaucratic access restrictions imposed by the parties to the conflict have greatly limited humanitarian access since the conflict began in April 2023, preventing lifesaving assistance from reaching people in dire need. This conflict has devastated the people of Sudan, leaving over 30 million of Sudan’s approximately 50 million people in need of humanitarian assistance and more than 12 million displaced. In North Darfur, the ongoing impacts of severe flooding during the summer months and an escalation in clashes between the SAF and RSF in besieged areas have continued to limit humanitarian access to vulnerable communities. Meanwhile, in South Kordofan, the destruction of the ongoing fighting and siege-like conditions is compounded by the aftermath of an above-average rainy season, increased food prices, and reduced access to farmland. If conditions do not improve, Famine is projected to spread to five additional areas of Sudan between now and May 2025, and there is a risk of Famine across additional parts of the country. We are working around the clock alongside our humanitarian partners in the region to get lifesaving assistance to the people who need it most despite ongoing conflict and access challenges. Last week, our partners WFP and UNICEF, in coordination with local response organizations, successfully delivered enough aid to help tens of thousands of Sudanese in areas at risk of Famine. These UN and local organizations continue their tireless efforts to get critical assistance to vulnerable communities across Sudan. It is essential that the SAF and RSF enable full and unfettered humanitarian access throughout the country to allow brave humanitarian workers to reach the most vulnerable with aid and to prevent Famine conditions from taking hold across wider swaths of the country. Millions of innocent lives are at stake, and the time to act is now.

Administrator Samantha Power Jimmy Carter’s elevation of human rights in U.S. foreign policy offers many urgent lessons for today. Whatever challenges he faced consistently applying the principles he championed as the 39th president, he made a radical break with decades of foreign policy tradition, changed the world’s understanding of America’s aspirations, showed deep empathy for individuals who had suffered human rights abuse and in so doing, made a lasting impact on both the United States and the world. Much of the celebration of Mr. Carter’s legacy has centered on his groundbreaking postpresidential work. Understandably so: Beyond his tireless volunteering, working to build affordable homes with Habitat for Humanity well into his 90s, the Carter Center – his passion for the past 42 years – has worked with USAID and others to nearly eliminate river blindness in the Western Hemisphere and to decrease the number of reported Guinea worm cases from more than three million per year in the mid-1980s to just 14 in 2023. Mr. Carter also changed the global understanding of what a free and fair election requires by pioneering the dispatch of diverse teams of impartial observers, which have monitored 125 elections in 40 countries. And after leaving office in 1981, he lent his mediation services to successive administrations, defusing tensions in such places as Guyana, Liberia and Sudan. CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL OP-ED ON THE NEW YORK TIMES